Abortion opponents are adamant they don’t want their taxes helping to pay for abortions.
That’s behind the Hyde Amendment (details here), which prohibits using federal funds to pay for most abortions (some states, including Washington, allow abortions to be paid for by Medicaid from the state’s contributions to the program).
But these hypocrites aren’t at all reticent about using the tax dollars of abortion supporters to pay for anti-abortion efforts.
“Anti-abortion centers across the country are receiving tens of millions of tax dollars to talk women out of ending their pregnancies,” ABC News says (here), “a nearly fivefold increase from a decade ago that resulted from an often-overlooked effort by mostly Republican-led states. … An Associated Press tally based on state budget figures reveals that nearly $89 million has been allocated to such centers across about a dozen states this fiscal year. A decade ago, the annual funding for the programs hovered around $17 million in about eight states.”
These centers have “been accused of providing misleading information about abortion and contraception — for example, [falsely] suggesting that abortion leads to mental health problems or breast cancer,” ABC News says.
In Pennsylvania, taxpayer funding of these centers came about through political deal-making. “Pennsylvania began subsidizing the program to appease opponents of a preexisting program that subsidized Planned Parenthood’s services for women’s health,” ABC News says. “Republican majorities in the Legislature have enforced the agreement ever since …. If money for the program were cut from the budget, ‘then we would ax that line item that goes to Planned Parenthood, as well,’ said state Rep. Kathy Rapp, a Republican who chairs the health committee in the House.” But the money allocated to Planned Parenthood doesn’t pay for abortions. It goes to supporting the group’s other services.
Politics, of course, especially GOP politics, is awash in hypocrisy. Politics has always been unprincipled, because it’s about getting what one group wants, or preventing another group from getting what it wants. The purpose of pointing this out is to emphasize that talking points pretending to be based on principle are nothing of the kind.
For example, when you say you’re against using tax money to pay for abortions as a matter of principle, and at the same time you spend tax dollars on preventing abortions, you’re not talking from principle at all. That’s just a disguise. It’s dressing your political wants in fancy clothing to make them look better, much like a thief wearing a tuxedo to a ball to pick pockets and snatch purses there.